Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he won’t be apologizing to UN Ambassador Susan Rice as the White House has suggested he and other Republicans should do.
“Not only does she not deserve an apology from me or anybody else for the way she misled the American people, she deserves to be subpoenaed by the Congress and have to give answers to hard questions, something she’s never had to do before,” the senator said last night on Fox. “She should apologize to Greg Hicks, the number two in Tripoli, the number two guy, second behind Chris Stevens, who said, I quote, ‘When I heard her testimony my jaw dropped, my heart stopped, and I’ve never been more embarrassed.'”
Dan Pfeiffer, a senior adviser to President Obama, said Sunday on ABC’s This Week that the Benghazi emails “absolutely do show, beyond a shadow of the doubt is that the Republican allegation that the White House, the State Department, someone else changed the CIA’s assessment for political reasons.”
“Frankly, I think that many of the Republicans who have been talking about this, now that they have seen the e-mails owe Ambassador Rice an apology for the things they said about her in the wake of the attack,” Pfeiffer added.
Graham said Pfeiffer “is just on a different planet.”
“I guess he thinks everybody in the country is stupid. Was she an empty vessel that they could pour misinformation through? She was chosen because she was the most politically compliant person. She just didn’t say this was caused by a video, a spontaneous event. She said, well, we obviously did have a strong security presence. She said there was a significant security presence defending our consulate and our facility in Benghazi, and that did not prove sufficient to the moment,” he said.
“Did anybody in any talking point suggest the embassy, consulate, was strongly, significantly, and substantially secured? She was blowing political smoke. She was selling for the president. She said, let me remind you, Al Qaeda is decimated, bin Laden is dead. She was trying to create a narrative seven weeks before the election that the consulate was strongly secured and the president was a strong leader on the war on terror.”
Graham said he was convinced in early briefings with Rice that she “was completely misrepresenting the facts.”
“If she looked at the classified information behind the talking points, she could have suggested to anyone on the planet this was caused by video and spontaneous in nature. All of the information coming from Libya. There’s 100 pounds of information suggesting a coordinated Al Qaeda-sponsored terrorist attack, and one ounce suggesting a protest, and they picked the ounce,” he said.
“Don’t lose sight of the fact that they story she told on behalf of President Obama and the administration was the best story they could tell seven weeks before election, totally disconnected from the facts. And she could be apologizing to Greg Hicks, to all the families involved, and she should be subpoenaed.”
Rice is still considered a top pick for Obama’s next national security adviser, which requires no Senate confirmation.
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